How many references do I need?

There are certain tricky questions I've developed stock answers for.
Questions like, do you write assignments, what's the point of post-modernism and how do I get crime statistics on left-handed burglars called Geoff in the UK?

But the big one is always 'how many references do I need?' The problem with the answer is the problem with the question. How do you quantify enough of anything? Enough to pass? Enough to get an 'A'? The question also presupposes that all references are equally good; they're not. So an assignment with 20 poor references probably won't be marked as highly as an assignment with 12 good quality ones. Put simply, the quantity is secondary, the quality is primary.

For dissertations this 'how many is enough' question is particularly difficult. For undergrads you're partly constrained by your word limit. You couldn't physically fit 300 references into a 6000 word dissertation even if you wanted to.
The best advice I can offer is this; look at how academics write journal articles, look at how they use referencing to construct and support their arguments and look at how often they do this. That should give you a pretty good idea of how often to reference whilst your writing, and in so doing you'll naturally end up with enough academic back up to write a decent piece of work.

Dear librarian...

...when have I got enough references?

There's three or four questions I get asked every year by every group I see;

1. Why haven't we got every book ever written?
2. Why don't you answer my emails within 10 seconds of me sending them?
3. Where do you buy your fabulous clothes?

And 4. When have I got enough references?
That's the tricky one.

The answer I give is always imprecise and maddening- "when you've got enough academic sources to answer the question originally posed". And that is the only answer I can give. The reason for this is simple in that for some assignments 10 references might do the job, whereas others may require four times that amount.

What I will say is this - if, during the searching phase, you reach the point where no matter what keywords you use you're still not finding anything new, then you've probably found everything useful already.

At that point stop looking for anything else and get on with writing the thing.

As a final piece of advice remember the 'find stuff, read stuff' suggestion.

Oh, and the answer to question 3 is Next. You're welcome.